What Complications Can Untreated Farsightedness Cause?

Elevated Eyestrain

Eyestrain is a term used to describe a range of general symptoms associated with overuse of the eyes. The eyes can get easily fatigued from intense use. Activities that constitute intense use include driving for extended periods, working on the computer, or reading. Any discomfort an individual may experience as a result of looking at a particular object for an extended period can be characterized as eyestrain. When someone has untreated farsightedness, it will result in elevated eyestrain on a regular basis. This happens because the patient is not able to properly focus on nearby objects, and they attempt to clear up the image by excessively squinting. Redundant squinting and moving of the eye due to the patient struggling to see correctly will lead to fatigued eye muscles. In addition, a patient struggling to see correctly will unconsciously constrict the muscles of their face, temples, eyelids, and jaw. Overuse of those muscles and the muscles that function to move the eyeballs can lead to an ongoing cycle of the patient continuing to tense these muscles. Furthermore, when performing visually tedious tasks like reading small print or driving long distances, the eyes do not blink as often as they need to. This causes dryness and irritation on top of the muscle strain associated with untreated farsightedness.

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Amblyopia

Amblyopia (lazy eye) is a condition where one eye is able to focus considerably better than the other eye. Over time, this causes the nerve and muscles that move one eye to work incorrectly, and this makes that eye look lazy or inactive in terms of movement and function. The type of amblyopia caused by untreated farsightedness is called a refractive lazy eye. This condition is best described as the eyes having two different degrees of refractive errors, which most often includes farsightedness. This type of lazy eye develops because the patient's brain depends upon the image produced by the eye with less of an uncorrected refractive error. This results in the individual's brain tuning out the blurred image produced by the other eye, leading to general disuse of that eye, and disuse causes adverse effects on the muscles and nerves controlling it. When the muscles and nerves that move the eye no longer know how to work correctly due to being stagnant for a time, the eye is considered a lazy eye. The refractive error in the lazy eye will continue to worsen because the eye no longer exercises any effort to focus on objects. The treatment of refractive lazy eye involves the correction of the refractive errors in both eyes, and it usually will require some extent of wearing a patch over the non-lazy eye.

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